On the Meaning of the Mahabharata - G Naganathan

This article aims to review at some length the book on the above subject (jointly brought out by the Asiatic Society of Bombay and Messrs Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 41 UA Bungalow Road, Jawahar Nagar, Delhi, 110 007; 1999; pp 146; Rs.150). The author, Dr. VS Sukthankar (1887-1943), was a highly regarded orientalist. Endowed with authentic scholarship and perspicacity, he has given in this book an elegant, inspired introduction to perhaps the greatest undying heritage of the world.

Of the four lectures making this book (MB in future) the first takes on the insensitive criticisms of the epic, the others deal with the story on the mundane, ethical, and transcendental planes. Why our learned author who seeks the quintessence of MB should have to lock horns with those who do not care for that is a trifle odd. C Rajagopalachari, India’s last Governor-General, once percipiently pointed out that however much one might have lived or traveled in India, he would still be a rank alien unless he was familiar with the Ramayana and the Mahabharata at least in some rudimentary form or the other. They make the warp and the woof of the Indian psyche which even otherwise is so subtle, tenuous, resilient, plastic, as to baffle the nut-and-bolt western mind shaped on Cartesian thought and chiseled on rock logic – the water logic of the East being close to incomprehensible. That western savants do little justice to the greater of epics was bemoaned by no less than Annie Besant, an Indian by adoption who has done us proud more than our own sisters.

© "The Theosophist" (December, 1999) published by The Theosophical Society, Adyar, Chennai 600 020. Website: http://www.ts-adyar.org. Reprinted with permission.

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